Corruption
by glitterburn
Summary: Van Helsing/Carl. Sequel to 'Nightmare'. Gabriel uncovers a secret from Carl's past - but does he have the right to reveal it?


**Corruption**

"We have made progress." Cardinal Jinette leaned back in his chair and looked pleased. I would hesitate to use the word 'smug', but that was how he appeared to me.

"We, your eminence?" I enquired delicately.

Jinette gave me one of his black looks. "Of course we! Who else but we could have taken this man, this Van Helsing, under our wing, into our bosom, and lavished upon him such tender mercy!"

I ducked my head so he wouldn't see me wince. Granted, he was a splendid theologian and he had a marvellous gift for organisation, but he did tend towards hyperbole and a rather excessive use of unfortunate metaphors. What was effective in a homily was, I thought, not nearly so appropriate in ordinary conversation.

Not that anything about our conversation was remotely ordinary.

My penitent posture fooled the cardinal. He tapped his fingers on the desk in front of him and said, "You have worked small wonders with him, but do not be so bold as to become the peacock now. The doctors, the Inquisitors, even the Swiss Guards – all of them have played their part in this."

"Well, yes," I said hastily. "Of course. And I don't want to seem rude -"

He raised an eyebrow. "When do you ever?"

"But you did put me in charge of him," I continued, deciding that it would be a good idea to ignore that last comment. "You told me to co-operate with him, and that's what I've been doing. I have corresponded with some of finest minds in psychiatric medicine in Europe, and have learned valuable insights. Van Helsing remembers more each day, even if it is rather garbled at times. The brain is a delicate instrument: one should not rush to unlock its mysteries."

Cardinal Jinette seemed not impressed in the slightest. His fingers drummed a final tattoo into silence, and we looked at each other.

I added hopefully, "And what's more, I think I have gained his trust."

"He is a human being, not an animal to be coaxed from its lair."

"Well, that's a matter for conjecture," I said. "You have my reports on the meetings between Van Helsing and myself, and I assure you that nothing is left out."

He sat forwards and rested his chin on his steepled hands. "Really."

For the first time, I began to realise that something was wrong. "Really truly," I said, somewhat helplessly. I took a step back as Jinette loomed to his feet. His head was lowered like that of a charging bull, and the gold crucifix he wore about his neck swung, flashing light at me as if in reminder that it was wrong to perjure myself before God.

"I have it on an authority higher than yours that you have, on more than one occasion, deliberately excised or misled us with the fabric of your reports," Jinette said. "What have you got to say for yourself?"

"I didn't know anybody else was listening." In fact, I was quite outraged, not to mention alarmed. If somebody could eavesdrop on a private conversation, then what else could they spy upon? The very thought made me feel quite cold, although it did set me thinking on methods of detecting any hidden watchers.

"Carlo," Cardinal Jinette sighed, "I know you don't act from any malicious purpose, that no evil lurks in your simple little heart, but you must see how it looks to those officials higher than me. I cannot always protect you."

I took another step back and slid off the edge of the Persian carpet that surrounded his desk. Marooned on a sea of black and white tiles, I quivered as I asked, "What do you mean?"

He smiled expansively and held out his hands. "I mean that you must tell the truth. You must recount every moment of conversation with Van Helsing, and you must not allow anything, no matter how insignificant, to slip your memory."

"I don't!" I protested. "Well. It's just that I don't always record it."

He shook his head. "Please do not do that again. The Inquisition has ways of extracting the smallest sliver of memory from a man, and I would hate for you to be… despoiled. Try to remember that, in future."

I repressed a shudder. He was trying to scare me. It was working.

"The only things I left out were his dreams," I said. "Surely a man is entitled to keep his dreams?"

Cardinal Jinette gave me a patient look. "Dreams are sent from God. As the inheritors of St Peter, we have a duty to monitor all dreams – including yours, Carlo."

"But I only dream of machines!" I protested, and immediately I felt myself blush, knowing that I'd told a lie. I had dreamt of Van Helsing a few nights ago, but had tried to forget the aberration.

Jinette seemed not to notice my slip. "Da Vinci dreamed of machines," he said. "He was a heretic."

"A damned good inventor, though," I added.

He winced. "A heretic is still a heretic, no matter how good he is with his hands. Please try to remember that, Carlo."

With that, he dismissed me. I left the cardinal's chambers uncertain as to whether I'd received chastisement or a warning, and I confess that the whole thing had made me rather bewildered.

* * *

I didn't see Van Helsing for a week after that. At first I assumed that it was punishment, and so I asked some of my colleagues if they had been given charge of conversing with him in my place. None of them would admit to it, and so then I fretted that the Inquisition had decided to question him. I felt guilty at that: what if one of those dreams that I'd been so careful to excise from my reports had contained a whiff of heresy? Pope Leo was a fair-minded man, but heresy was heresy, as Jinette had said.

For two days I bent over my laboratory table, armed with a large sheet of map-paper and several blue pencils. I had had to clear a lot of my other experiments and inventions onto other tables, and inadvertently annoyed an Orthodox and a Buddhist in the process. I knew they would get over it; and besides, Buddhists weren't supposed to be the aggressive sort.

Beneath my pencils, the drawing took shape. A system of wires, fine and interlinked, that could form a web around a whole room – maybe even a building, if it was necessary – with tiny listening devices, so that wherever a man stood, even if he whispered his voice would be caught and carried through the wires.

Jinette's remark about the eavesdropper on the conversations I had with Van Helsing had stung me more than I'd expected. If I could invent something that would remove the need for a human watcher and make the process more remote, then I could also invent something to block such a device.

Reform and counter-reform. The Church did it, so why couldn't I?

On the third day, as I began to tinker with the little listening machines, the Buddhist came over to my table. He watched me for a moment, and then said, "I heard you were asking about Van Helsing?"

I jabbed my thumb with the diamond-tipped screwdriver. "Damn it! Yes, yes I asked about him. Do you know where he is?"

The Buddhist prodded the listening-device. It was small, and would fit easily into the very centre of a man's palm. I was quite proud of it, if I do say so myself.

"It looks like a bug," the Buddhist said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"An insect. Yes, it looks like a bug."

I wasn't interested in what my invention resembled, and prompted, "Van Helsing?"

The Buddhist scratched his shaved head. "He was sent on a mission by Cardinal Jinette to test his ingenuity and stamina. I heard they expect him back by Sunday, in time for Mass."

"But – but they can't send him out yet!" I said. "He's only been here a matter of months, and he hasn't regained his memory! Jinette must be out of his mind to even suggest such a thing. This is just not right. I will go immediately and -"

"Do what?" asked a voice behind me, and I froze. The Buddhist grimaced in sympathy and slunk away to his own bench, and I turned around to face Cardinal Jinette.

"I was only saying…"

He was unhappy, I could tell. His eyebrows beetled together furiously, and his skin was taut, his eyes glittering. "You are not paid to talk, but to think and to create!"

I raised a tentative hand. "Actually, I'm not paid at all, but -"

"Silence!" he bellowed, and I actually took a whole leap backwards. The entire laboratory had suddenly gone very quiet, and I was aware of the horrified curiosity from all around me. The sounds of the machines turning, the bellows wheezing and the bubbling of various compounds should have reassured me, but it did quite the opposite.

"It is not your place to tell a cardinal what to do," Jinette said loudly. He was playing to the audience, and they reacted to their cue, sighing and muttering. It was only then that I realised that I had overstepped the boundaries of obedience to which I'd sworn myself as a religious.

I hung my head. "I'm sorry, Your Eminence."

"You're always sorry. This time it is not enough. You will spend the next month in contemplative behaviour, reading edifying works from the Church Fathers while you consider how you will make amends for your impertinence."

My shoulders slumped in defeat. "I don't like the Church Fathers."

There was a shocked gasp from the nearest bench, and then Jinette roared, "You will read them because I told you to read them!"

I nodded so fast that I felt sick. "Yes, yes, I will read them."

He came closer, and muttered, "You were never so intransigent before. I wonder if Van Helsing has corrupted you."

"No, Your Eminence. I swear he has not. Besides, you have the reports of our conversations, both from myself and from… the higher authorities. There has been no heretical or disobedient talk between us."

Jinette leaned closer, his red robes obliterating my grey mendicant's cassock where they touched. "There are other ways of corrupting a man, Carlo. God help you if you have discovered such ways with Gabriel Van Helsing."

* * *

I knew he was up to something when he came into the library a few days later. Most people are quiet and respectful when they enter a library, and show all due reverence to the books, and they remain silent so as not to disturb the other readers. Van Helsing clearly had little experience of libraries. He slammed the door on the way in with such force that a stucco cherub dropped from the roof like a dead fly. He caught it, of course, but not before I had crossed myself and sent a quick plea to the Lord for tolerance. I'm sure that God is very understanding, but sometimes I'm not.

Anyway, he came in and set the cherub on the nearest desk before striding across the room towards me. I sank down behind the codex I was reading and pretended not to have seen him. It was bad enough that the librarian was still reeling in shock over the cherub. I didn't want to be associated with Van Helsing should he decide to gnaw on the furniture or daub upon the fifteenth-century ceiling paintings. Such an association would make it impossible for me to obtain the rare books and manuscripts that I needed during my exile from the laboratory.

He saw me despite my precautions, and bellowed "Carl!" as if I were several miles away rather than a few feet. I heard a wail of despair followed by the sound of a door closing – but quietly, as one should do these things – and I realised that the librarian had run away.

I peeked over the top of the codex. "What do you want?"

"I've been looking for you everywhere." He sat on the desk opposite mine, shoving aside a sixteenth-century portalan that the librarian had been examining for spoil marks. I winced as the vellum made a flabby squeaking noise.

"I've been working," I said, ignoring the fact that I'd been ordered to work as punishment for befriending him. I tried not to sound too censorious, but it didn't work very well.

"So have I." Van Helsing grinned and took off his hat, and dropped it on top of the portalan beside him. "But you can take a break and listen to me. I've found out something of great important."

"Really? How important?" I asked. "As important as the discovery of pi? Or as important as penicillin?"

He frowned at my tone. "Well, that would depend on how you define 'important'," he said. "Personally, I can live without the existence of pi; but if that's what turns you on…"

"It doesn't turn me on," I spluttered. "Honestly, Van Helsing! Why must you insist on reducing things to such a base level?"

"Because that's where we all came from, in the beginning," he said, and gave me a smile that, I supposed, was meant to be charming. "But anyway, the only way you'll know if the information I have for you is important or not, is for you to hear it, right? Then you can make your decision."

I was about to argue against this, but then decided not to bother. The man was impossible in this frame of mind, and so I nodded my agreement.

He sat there for a moment, hugging his important information to him like a cushion, and then, in what I thought was a rather abrupt _volte-face_, he asked: "Why are you a Franciscan?"

I stared at him in complete astonishment. "What has that to do with anything?"

"Answer the question, Carl."

"I – I…" I could feel myself floundering, and it was not a nice sensation. There are many, many things that I question each and every day of my life, but this was not one of them. So I answered, "Why are _you_ a demon-hunter?"

Van Helsing scowled. "Carl!"

"All right, all right." I waved my hands nervously. "I think it's because…" and I screwed up my face, desperate for an answer, "because I like animals?"

He laughed. "The only animals I've ever seen you express any preference towards have been cattle, sheep and pigs," he said, "and then only once they've been butchered and cooked."

"I do like animals," I protested, affronted. "When I was younger there was a mouse in my cell. I used to feed it sometimes. It was grey, and had beady black eyes and a long tail -"

"I know what a mouse looks like."

I sniffed. "I'm only saying. Anyway, I didn't know if my mouse was a girl or a boy, and so to save confusion I named it Mouse. It was a very good pet until it chewed through several of the slats on my pallet and I awoke one night to find that my bed had collapsed. And so then I was terribly annoyed."

Van Helsing looked fascinated. "What did you do?"

"I caught it, of course," I said. "With a mousetrap of my own invention, one that would not kill the creature but just captured it safely. And then I let it out in Cardinal Jinette's quarters."

He snorted with amusement and shook his head. "Kind to animals, but not always to human beings… That's not enough of a reason to be a Franciscan, Carl."

I sighed and closed the pages of the codex, and then leaned my chin against the thick leather binding. "I don't know why. It simply happened that way, and I've never questioned it. I daresay I'd have been equally suited to being a Dominican -"

"No. You're not rabid enough," he said, only half-suppressing a smile at his own joke.

"Why do you hate the Dominicans so much?" I asked. "I've never heard you say a nice word about a single one of them."

Van Helsing paused and thought about it, and then shrugged. "There must be a reason, but I don't remember it now."

"Like I said before, you'll probably remember things because of automatic responses, like that one," I said, interested in his reaction. "I know you believe that you weren't a monk, but perhaps you were a friar…"

"I am not like you," he said, quite emphatically.

"Just an idea. I can't imagine you as a Dominican, anyway," I said soothingly.

"Thank God for that." He crossed himself in a pious gesture that sat quite strangely with his looks and bearing. "Anyway, you've changed the subject. It's remarkable how you manage to do that."

"You do it all the time," I said.

"I'm allowed to. I have papal dispensation."

"Do you really?"

Van Helsing chuckled. "No. But I do know why you're a Franciscan."

"Really?" I looked at him, and felt something slide deep in the pit of my belly. It was true: I had never once thought about why the Order had chosen me, or if I had chosen them at some point in my childhood. Growing up in the Vatican did rather skew one's perspective, I suppose. Until recently, I'd thought that everybody was a member of one religious order or another.

"Yes, really." Van Helsing looked very pleased with himself, and said, "It's quite simple. You were born in Assisi."

I gazed at him in astonishment. "I was?"

He made a reply, but I didn't hear him. Instead I was sorting through the jumble of memories that I'd kept back for years, now frantic to find one that would either confirm or deny his words. There was something, long distant, that suggested warm stones and a blue sky and tall trees as dark as night that whispered together in the breeze – but was that my memory, or did it come from elsewhere?

"Carl, are you listening?" Van Helsing asked, and I jerked out of my thoughts.

"How do you know – Who told you about Assisi?"

He looked evasive. "I was… working last week, and in return for my help I decided to ask a few questions."

"About me?" Now I felt uncomfortable. "You had no right!"

"Hey." He sounded hurt. "I thought you'd want to know."

"I live in one of the biggest repositories of information in the entire world," I snapped. "I could have found out for myself."

"And yet you never did. Why is that, Carl?"

I blustered, slammed the codex onto the desk, and stood up.

"Why? Is it because you don't want to know? Are you scared, Carl – scared of where you might have come from, who you might have been?"

"No!" I had to restrain myself from putting my hands over my ears.

He was angry now, but whether his anger was directed at himself or me, I couldn't tell. He got off the desk and stalked towards me, and said, "Your father was a priest – a good man, loved by his parishioners."

My brain told me that this didn't equate. "But -"

He continued, remorseless: "Your mother was his housekeeper. Don't look so shocked, Carl! It happens all the time."

"Not to me, it doesn't." I held up my hands to stave off his approach, almost panicked by this flow of information. "You've just told me I was born out of wedlock. Worse, that my father was a sinful priest. My mother…"

"She was not a harlot, just a woman who fell in love with the wrong man. Or the right man, as it happens, since you were the end result." Van Helsing softened the blow with a twisted smile that, presumably, was meant to make me feel better. "Nobody in the town judged either of your parents for what happened."

"Then why didn't they keep me," I asked, and my voice was emotionless.

He hesitated before saying, "Your father was harsh with himself. He saw you as evidence of his fall from grace. So he decided to send you away as an oblate, so that, in effect, you would become his life-long penance."

I had to sit down again, and blundered against the desk behind me. I clutched at it desperately. I could barely speak, but I had to hear it clarified: "To assuage his guilt, he… he sent me here? To Rome?"

Van Helsing regarded me with a curious sympathy. "As far as I can tell, yes. That's exactly what he did. Your father was at the seminary with Jinette, so it was easy for him to call in a few favours. I always wondered why he looked out for you."

"I doubt it is for any misplaced paternal reason," I said before I could stop myself, and then I stared at the marble floor, completely in disarray.

I heard the creak of leather as Van Helsing moved, and then he said, his tone softer than before, "I won't ask what that was supposed to mean."

He was too close. I moved again, clutching my cassock to me as if it would ward off his attentions – or his intentions. I wasn't sure which worried me more.

"It means nothing. Forget that I said it."

"Carl…"

"What happened to my father?"

Van Helsing sighed. "He died not long after he sent you away."

"I see. And my mother?"

"She got married, or so I was told."

I was struggling with this. "Yes. Well. Do I have any siblings?"

"No."

"Well, that's a relief. I mean, I wouldn't want to have to suddenly come up with thirty years' or so of Christmas and birthday gifts for somebody I'd never met now, would I?" I was aware that I had started to sound a little hysterical, and so I shut up. Silence was usually the best option, I'd found, but there was too much to say. The problem was, I had no idea how to say it.

Van Helsing seemed to realise that I was lost. "I thought you'd want to know."

"You thought!" I exploded, and the sound of my voice was so loud that it echoed from the vaulted ceiling and shocked me with its vehemence. "Ten minutes ago I had no family, no history, no parents – only a few scattered memories of life outside of these walls. And then you come in here and tell me about my father, my mother… You gave me my parents, and then you ripped them away from me again! Have you any idea what it's like, to be told firstly that your father was a priest, and then in the next breath to be told, oh by the way, it doesn't matter because he's dead? _Do_ you, Gabriel?"

He took my ranting very calmly. "You always knew you had parents."

"On a logical, biological level, yes! But they weren't important in the grand scheme of things, in the world that I grew up in." I took a deep breath and then let it all out in a long, shuddering sigh. "You can't just tell me this and expect me not to care, to treat it as if it were an experiment. It's not fair, Gabriel; it's just not right. It's like you're suggesting that everything I ever believed in was a lie."

"You're still the same person," he offered, quietly.

"Am I?" I wondered at his logic. I certainly didn't feel the same any more.

"I believe I am the same person that I was before – whatever it was that happened that took my memory," Van Helsing said with a shrug.

"Is that why you told me? To show me that, in a way, I'm like you?"

He looked a little ashamed at that. "In an immensely selfish way, yes."

I tried to laugh, but it came out sounding sad and broken. "You would make me a heretic like yourself."

"I'm not a heretic," he said, surprised. "Surely it is not heresy to question the world, or your place in it."

"Maybe not. I don't know. I am a poor theologian."

Van Helsing put a hand on my shoulder. "You know your past, now. No secrets. Nothing is hidden. There is nothing that can surprise you, or hurt you, because you are aware of it. For me, there is so much left unaccounted for; so much that could still do a tremendous amount of damage."

He gave me a little shake. "I'm sorry if I upset you, Carl. I just wanted one of us at least to know where the hell they were coming from, even if we don't yet know where it is that we're going."

"And you think that's necessary?"

"Where we're going? Yes."

I looked up. "I don't know that I understand you."

"Don't you?" He looked at me for a long moment, and then bent his head and briefly, gently, pressed his lips to mine.

I stood there, startled, feeling the imprint of his kiss – had that been a kiss? Surely: but it wasn't anything like I'd expected – and then I said, "Oh."

Van Helsing moved away and picked up his hat. "I suppose that's heresy, too," he said, smiling, as he put the hat on his head and turned down the brim.

"No," I said, boldly. "Apparently, it's called corruption."

**end**


End file.
